


There Rust and Let Me Die

by Cypreus



Series: The Changing Seasons [4]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Childhood Friends, F/M, Falling in love in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 00:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20331037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cypreus/pseuds/Cypreus
Summary: Edelgard falls.It is not the victory she envisioned.





	There Rust and Let Me Die

“What is this?”

Hubert looks up at his emperors question. Rhetorical, by the sound of it. He’s always had a fondness for mind games but it seems now is not the time to start. He doesn’t look twice at the item he has placed in front of her.

“A dagger, your majesty.”

She asked him to fetch her a dagger. She failed to mention which one.

The slight twitch of her brows show that she is displeased. He sees in her eyes she doesn’t approve of this little delinquency. There’s a possibility she’ll demote him from his position, imprison him for this imagined betrayal, possibly even stab him with it for attempting to raise an emotion out of her. But she is composed as ever, breathing slowly through her nose, silent as she contemplates him. She is composed to the untrained eye. But he is Hubert. He sees even the things she refuses to see about herself. The purse of displeasure on her lips betrays agony that should have made them quiver. The sharp light in her eyes belie the sorrow in their hollow depths. He might be cold blooded but he knows her better than anyone. And Edelgard could never be as cold blooded as he.

This dagger means the world to her. But she refuses to show it. She wants this war to end. But he fears she has lost all sight.

She hears the distant clang as the lance falls from his hand. Dimitri looks down at the knife lodged in his chest. Her pale hand wrapped tight around the blue hilt. That dagger. The one she used to defend herself from Kostas all those years ago, he wanted to see her carve a future for herself with this blade. A life to choose. He wonders if this is the future she had always envisioned or perhaps she is just another puppet caught in the strings of her destiny. 

Neither of them dare move and break the solemn silence of the moment. If he didn’t know any better, he wouldn’t have seen the shock in her pale eyes, the marginal scale of which they widened. Wouldn’t be able to see the slight tremble of uncertainty written on her face. But he knows her better than that. He knows she can feel the victory grasped in her hands. And at this impasse, Edelgard doesn’t know if victory is what she wants. 

He breaks the silence with a whisper. A trickle of red running from the corner of his lips.

“Did you ever imagine,” he gently folds his hand over her wrist, feeling the tension drain away from her grip on the dagger, “that it would come to this?”

She feels the sting of tears rise unbidden. His question was entirely unfair. Of course she’d never, could never imagine- But that wasn’t true. She’s always known this day would come. Knows it in the painful throbbing of her heart. She wonders briefly if this is what he’s feeling now, dagger lodged between his ribs.

_ No. I never wanted this. _

She feels-

She _feels_.

And she hates it.

But-

This is for the future. And he's in her way.

Her mind blanks, and without thought she loses sight of the world. Only sees the red right in front of her. In a moment, she drives the blade into his stomach not noticing when she’d pulled it out. Again. And again. His larger form hunches over her. She pushes him away or drags him to the ground, her body following his warmth. Her knees frame either side of his narrow waist. The blade coming down once more cracking on the edge of his collarbone. The man beneath gasps in pain. Her grip on the handle is turning her knuckles white. She’s trembling. The snowfall tells her it’s cold but her heart is on fire and her eyes are burning bright.

“I have to finish this.”

Her voice breaks. To lose control. She’s never wanted to lose control. But at this very moment, she wants and she wants. Her heart and her mind war within her. Her body moves without guidance. 

But his warmth drags across her temple, sweeping stray white strands from her face, her ever immaculate hair dirtied and loose. 

“El.”

For a second she comes back to herself. And he’s smiling at her. Soft and warm despite the winter chill, he looks so much like the boy he once was. His single eye shining with unshed tears.

The backs of his fingers wipe the salted tracks from her mud splattered face. She feels the skin of his ungloved hands on her cheek and the rush of tears from her eyes.

“It’s alright, El.”

He whispers so delicately. As if she would break just by the sound of his voice. _ He’s weak. _Weak and on the verge of death. So weak. She can finish him off just like this. But she can barely feel her own skin, can barely breathe for the lump in her throat. In her hysteria, she swears she can feel his pulse fade away under her fingertips, his arm falling limp toward the floor.

“Don’t-” 

_ Don’t leave me. _But he’s already gone, the light leaving his one blue eye.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

He says nothing. How can he when she’s stolen the breath from his lungs? When she’s taken the life from his meagre pathetic existence? And yet, his gaze is alive with warmth and a soft forgiving smile. In the end, he’s still the same soft hearted boy she had known.

“Don’t look at me like that!”

She can barely feel herself under the itch in her skin. The feeling of disgust crawling all over her neck. Can barely feel the dagger sinking into flesh. 

“I have to finish this! I have to finish this!”

The dagger drives in over and over. Each splatter of blood is warm on her hands. She screams profanities at his corpse, his one eye refusing to leave her face. This is where she put her hopes and her dreams of a united Fodlan. With bloodshed and lost loves and a blade used to carve out her future.

The crack of a rib for peace.

“I hate you.”

The rush of blood between fingers for the future.

“I hate you.”

A sacrifice made for all of Fodlan.

“I-”

_ I love- _

The realisation makes her limbs weak. All the fight rushing out of her tired body. The dagger falls useless to the floor as she slumps over, sobbing into his chest. His blood still warm. There she stays, her body over his until even the warm splatter of red on her face turns to ice on her skin.

Hubert finds her straddling the prince, face tilted toward the sun, eyes closed, revelling in the only warmth that can be found in this frozen kingdom. Her palms resting on the body beneath her, gloves removed, her fingers turning purple. She stays still, unwilling to let time flow, unwilling to move forward.

“It’s over.”

She opens her eyes just as the sun begins to leave the cold winter sky. Her face a fleeting tremor of horror, as if seeing the madness beneath her for the first time. The madness she has created.

“Dimitri. Hey, wake up. The sun is setting, you have to go home.”

Cold fingers brush against cold skin, as she tucks golden strands behind one ear. She wipes the blood off his lips, from the corners of his mouth. The red doing nothing but spreading across his cheek and into his hair.

“Dimitri.”

She knows that no matter how many times she calls his name, he’ll never be able to call hers again.

“Dimi.”

If she had been selfish. If she had followed her heart. If she had reached out for what she wanted instead of fighting for a future that leads to this. Then maybe he would still call her El. Maybe she wouldn’t need to unite Fodlan. Maybe they could be happy. Maybe. Maybe.

She laughs. Laughs without restraint, with streams of salted tears running tracks down her bloodied face. 

She wipes at his hair, face falling as his golden locks turn red. 

“It’s not coming off.”

“Your majesty-”

She reaches for the dagger fallen somewhere beside the two, cutting a piece of his cape the size of a handkerchief. Bloodied fingers then twine on a lock of golden hair, matted brown in blood and mud. The blade cuts cleanly. What she wants with some hair and a tattered piece of rag, Hubert can only guess.

But the uncertainty written on her face tells him she fears his judgement. _ Edelgard _fearing him? For once, she looks the very age she is. Still barely into her adulthood. Hubert forgets sometimes how young she still is.

“Great emperors of old would take a piece of their enemy as trophy,” she explains.

He doesn’t miss the gentle way she ties a lilac ribbon around the lock of hair, or the trembling of her hands as she folds it into the cloth of blue.

_ Yes, but they usually cut off from the neck. _

“I am merely,” she breathes shakily, “upholding tradition.”

He doesn’t mention how ironic he finds it. She who hates tradition. Ah, but hasn’t he always loved irony? 

She gets up, her body light and not quite there. She drops the dagger on the floor.

“Get rid of it”

“You’ve had this dagger since childhood.”

The words leave his mouth before he can stop them. Perhaps age has turned him into a sentimental fool. Perhaps regret is the thing that finally, finally turns him human.

A precious gift from a precious friend, stained with the blood of the prince. Abandoned on the ground, wasted and useless, the emperor herself unable to look at the sight of what was once treasured. The strange metaphor doesn’t escape him.

“It used to mean something to you.”

“Does it matter Hubert?”

He pretends he doesn’t see his liege weep, or hear the wail stuck at the back of her throat. But he could never pretend not to see the haunted look on her face as she turns to him. At once relieved, elated and anguished. Like the revelation will break her already fragile state.

“I win.”

Edelgard falls in love.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: You know what would be cute? If he gifted it to Eddie.  
Me: :D  
Also me: You know what would be sad? If she stabs him with it.  
Me: D:
> 
>   
_Gods, no... don't leave me <strike>Celica</strike> Dimitri, you can't_
> 
> I started writing this because of Sylvain and Dimitri's C support and I was honestly hoping it was Eddie he gave the dagger to plus she's the only girl I've seen with a dagger at that time.
> 
> This was all Hubert POV when I first wrote it. .. But then I got to the part where Dimitri confirms who he gave it to and Edelgard took over my writing... It was all downhill from there.
> 
> Title is from Juliet's famous death scene in Romeo and Juliet
> 
> I've been wanting to do an Edelgard wins and a Dimitri wins as alternative endings to Dancing Lessons. Dimitri's one is next.


End file.
